Cranfield University extends design bursaries

Cranfield University is injecting £50 000 into its bursary scheme to encourage UK graduates on to its Master of Design in Innovation and Creativity in Industry course.

The bursaries will help up to ten design, science or engineering graduates to pay for the one-year course, which was founded last year by Cranfield and the University of the Arts London in response to the 2005 Cox Review of Creativity in Business.

The course, which is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, aims to teach science graduates about how creative practice can improve products and services. It also teaches designers about how business works.

‘This year we decided to make the bursaries a policy-level scheme,’ says course leader Mike Goatman.

‘There are a lot of creative people out there that the world is not going to be able absorb easily. Designers need to understand what sort of a business proposition they can put forward,’ he adds.

Goatman reports that about half the students on the course are from engineering backgrounds and half are design graduates.

‘There are also quite a few professionals on the course who have been working in design for two years and have realised that they have to build their business knowledge’.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England last week announced funding cuts for research at design-led courses at the Royal College of Art and Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, among others.

See the next edition of Design Week, out on Thursday, for more on the HEFCE’s revised design and engineering funding programme.